The Ice Pilot Part 36

Snow flurries blotted out all view; the wind swung from the true west to the north, and held in its grip the icy cold of winter. It struck through the girl's furs and chilled her body, as she walked back and forth along the quarter-deck watching Stirling, who seemed possessed with a Viking's rage at the elements gathered about. His one aim was to guide the ship between the Cape and the ice field. Open water still showed ahead of this narrow pa.s.sage.

The _Pole Star_ swirled in the current and ran down the wind which was now abeam. A leaden pall crept over the surface of the watery world, and the ice floes ground against the skin of the ship and obstructed the way. Stirling shaded his eyes from the snow and peered forward. The ice had gathered upon the spokes of the wheel, and a sleet drove from aft to forward.

Gripped by the majesty of their danger, the girl watched Stirling and prayed for deliverance. She knew that the reaching arm had overtaken the driving ship. It was a matter of minutes now whether they would gain the waters of Baffin Bay or be crushed between the floes and the rocky headland. A single screw's turn might decide the matter.

The ship staggered and swerved; a crash sounded as the sharp stem mounted a floe. The world seemed to the girl to spin, as Stirling reached downward, grasped the spokes, and lifted the wheel so that the staggering ship could turn from the land. He sheered in the moment of time, and the spars grated along the overhang of basalt.

Suddenly Stirling stiffened and rapidly twirled the wheel, leaned far over the spokes, and watched the waters ahead of the _Pole Star_. A rift showed through the floes, and toward this he steered. The last of the reaching ice sprang landward, leaped the distance, and drove its teeth toward the ship. It missed by a scant cable's length, and the crash and reverberation as this ice was dashed upon the sh.o.r.e woke Helen Marr from her prayers. She staggered to her feet, and stood swaying on the slippery deck. Stirling had swung and was staring at her, his strong face covered with a broad smile.

He turned the spokes by instinct as he continued to look at her. "Look,"

he said, pointing a steady finger aft. "Look, Miss Marr!"

She wheeled and looked over the taffrail of the _Pole Star_. Ice, piled upon ice, blocked the pa.s.sage through which they had come. The roar of the great North pack was like a baffled horde held at bay. The ship plunged on and out into open water.

"Where are we?" she asked, pressing a hand to her forehead. "Where are we, Mr. Stirling?"

The Ice Pilot smiled, swung, steadied the wheel, and motioned over the wild world of tossing waves. "That's Baffin Bay!" he said. "We have made the Northeast Pa.s.sage!"

CHAPTER x.x.xVI-ACROSS THE CABIN

Helen Marr glided to the canvas rail that overlooked the waist of the _Pole Star_, brushed the hair from her face, and wrung the water from her mittens.

Then she turned to Stirling with a high toss of her chin. "Are you going across?" she asked.

"To Greenland, miss."

"But why not south and-home?"

Stirling moved the wheel a spoke and blocked it with his knee, pointing toward the sh.o.r.es of Baffin Land.

The girl cried aloud as she saw the reason for the Ice Pilot's course.

Ice backed by more ice was rushing northward; winter had arrived, and new floes and bergs were forming in the west. There was no route to the southward, and the ship held the only open lane.

"Greenland," she said with hesitancy. "But Greenland is as wild as that coast." She pointed over the _Pole Star's_ quarter.

Stirling smiled and removed his knee from the wheel. He changed the course more to the true north, and the ship plunged on as Slim and the Russians realized that they had escaped from the white jaws of an icy death.

"Greenland," said Stirling, "is Heaven compared to Baffin Land. You shall see."

The girl hesitated and glanced at Stirling, who was consulting the binnacle, reaching an arm through the spokes of the wheel and wiping the gla.s.s with his bare fingers. A tiny light showed over the compa.s.s as the wheel moved with a slow lifting of the starboard rope.

The ship steadied, a halo of smoke and flame crowning the single funnel.

Slim, the Frisco dock rat, was redeeming himself, and his voice rolled up through the ventilators as he urged the Russians in the stokehold to renewed efforts.

Stirling partly turned his face and watched the girl, who soon was gone over the quarter-deck with a faint nod backward. The closing companion slide told Stirling that she had been slightly offended by his preoccupied manner, and wondered at this as he stared with unseeing eyes out over the waters of Baffin Bay.

Hour after hour he guided the ship, a lone figure wrapped in thought and retrospection. He knew nothing of women; he felt that Helen Marr was as remote as the stars above him, and he had grown to look upon her as a companion-that was all. He feared to trust his mind to go more deeply into the matter.

The course he had chosen revealed the hand of a super-pilot. The grinding floes to leeward were blown by the wind in such a manner as to leave an open lane between them and the pack which was rushing to fill the Bay. The last days of the open season had arrived; a week, at the most, would see the water frozen over and cemented into an icy lock which would hold until the next July.

There was a limit to his endurance-strong man as he was. A swerve of the ship-the running off a full point-brought the truth home to him that he had been asleep. He woke and gathered himself together with a shrug of his shoulders, only soon to doze again. The ship went off the course, crashed against a drifting floe, and a Russian called a warning from the forepeak.

Stirling stiffened and twirled the spokes in time to avoid an ice island of an acre's extent. He stared upward, as if in the heavens would be found inspiration, and the haze of sky and snow and whirling sleet allowed the faint light of the sun to penetrate its veil. He calculated the sun's position, and drew out his watch, remembering the drift of the currents in Baffin Bay. It might be necessary to take a lunar or solar observation before he reached the Greenland sh.o.r.e, which was more than a day's steaming to the eastward.

Grimly Stirling blocked the wheel, replaced his watch, rose on tiptoes, and called the Russian from the forepeak. Fortunately, this lookout had some slight knowledge of steering. He climbed the steps on the leeward side and touched his cap.

Stirling pointed at the binnacle. "Keep that course," he said. "Do you understand?"

The Russian grinned and grasped the spokes of the wheel. Stirling stepped back a foot or more and watched the jib boom of the ship as it hung steady above the dark waters, then staggered toward the cabin companion. Down this he went, paused irresolutely in the light which streamed from the deck cl.u.s.ter, then pitched across a divan which was between two closed portholes, and sank into the deepest slumber of his life.

He awoke as if his sleep had been but a moment. Every limb ached. He glanced upward and saw Helen Marr standing over him, her expression intent and compa.s.sionate. She opened her lips, but did not speak, and her eyes travelled over Stirling's features, then swung toward the table. A steaming pot of coffee stood there, and beside it were biscuits and potted beef.

Stirling staggered to his feet and felt around with his hands. His coat had been removed while he slept; a pillow lay where his head had been, and the divan was partly covered with a Navaho blanket.

He realized that she had covered him up, and he appreciated, too, her thoughtful attention in keeping warm the coffee.

Stirling stepped to the table and turned. "Thank you," he said.

She smiled with comradeship and came across the cabin. "I've been on deck," said she, pointing toward the cabin companion. "The sun is on the ice, and the Russian is still holding the course you gave him."

Stirling looked at his pocket; he had slept thirteen hours. Soon he began to eat, now and then glancing at the girl by his side. He finished without words and entered Marr's cabin. When he emerged, ten minutes later, his chin was clean shaven and his hair parted.

He crammed some tobacco into a cord-wrapped pipe, found his cap and coat, and turned toward her as he placed one foot on the steps leading to the cabin companion. "Are you coming up?" he asked.

"Do you want me to?"

Stirling smiled. "You're my first mate," he said. "You and I shall finish the pa.s.sage to Greenland. We should reach Upernivik by midnight."

"Is that a port?" Her voice had taken on new strength as she watched him.

"Yes," he answered. "About the only place we can safely winter. Are you sorry I didn't try for Davis Strait and the North Atlantic?"

"You knew best," she declared, turning away from his level glance. "I shall be on deck in ten minutes," she added, softly.

Stirling thrust his head and shoulders above the cabin companion and studied the scene on the deck. The Russian drowsed at the wheel, with his body leaning over the spokes; the funnel was still mantled with a rolling cloud of smoke; two of the revolutionists stood forward by the break of the forecastle peak, keeping watch.

Crossing the icy planks, Stirling touched the Russian on the shoulder and motioned for him to go forward and get some sleep. Stirling's smile was so contagious that the Russian thrust out his hand impulsively, and Stirling grasped it with fervour.

He looked at the binnacle and then swept the sea, his eyes widening in calculation. The lane of open water stretched east and west across Baffin Bay. South, by the glint on the horizon haze, ice was gathered for the closing in of winter. Northward, bergs and floes showed, marshalled in squadrons and companies like soldiers preparing for a charge. The sky, seen through the falling snow, was leaden.

With some slight trepidation, Stirling awaited the coming of Helen Marr.

She had acted strangely of late. They were to be thrown together during the ten months of winter at Upernivik; there would be no possible escape to a more civilized community.

Slim, the Frisco dock rat, appeared at the railing of the engine-room companion. He emerged to the deck and walked aft, his face grimy. Up the quarter-deck steps he came-on the leeward side, out of deference to Stirling.